“Perception is reality.” But is it based on the facts? (Part I)

Before the start of today’s King County Council Meeting, I shook hands with Stefan… and the universe didn’t explode. So I guess us bloggers are just ordinary folk after all.

Anyway….

I didn’t really expect there to be much news generated at this meeting, as it mostly consisted of KC Elections Director Dean Logan presenting his previously released report on the November election. But there actually were a couple issues he cleared up. (At least in my mind… maybe not in the minds of some of the slower councilfolk.)

Military & Overseas Ballots

According to Logan these ballots are one and the same, and they are all mailed in postage paid envelopes provided by the federal government. Thus there is no bulk mail account or third-party mailing house with records to check. They were delivered directly to the post office, by the Oct. 8 deadline… and an internal department log confirms this.

This seemed perfectly clear to me and other members of the audience, but not apparently to Councilmember Kathy Lambert, who followed up by asking Logan if he was aware that the mailing house didn’t send these out until Oct. 13. Um… KC didn’t use a mailing house for these ballots, and Logan repeated that they were mailed out on Oct. 8. Additional military & overseas ballots went out as requests came in.

So as expected, this is a non-issue.

Ballot Enhancement

There have been conflicting reports as to the process by which ballots were enhanced. Some reports say election workers used redacting tape, and then marked over the tape. Some reports claim workers marked the ballots directly. It turns out, both are true.

In cases where the worker could fill in the oval without obscuring the original mark, the ballot was enhanced directly… for example, where the voter circled the oval, and the election worker filled it in. Logan showed a slide illustrating just that. However, where filling in the oval would have obscured the mark — such as in a partially filled in oval — redacting tape was placed over the oval, and then the worker marked the tape. In all cases, the enhancement was done by a two-person team with an observer present, and a log of the changes were kept as required by law.

Just to be sure, I confirmed this with Logan after the meeting. So again… this is a non-issue.

The Felon Vote

Logan says that the department has passed on to the prosecutors office a list of about 100 suspected felon votes. The prosecutor will investigate, and pass on to the sheriff’s office those cases that warrant further investigation. This is the standard procedure, but when asked, Logan did not know of a single case in which a felon has been prosecuted for voting.

Councilmember Steve “I love grandmothers” Hammond attempted to grandstand on this and other issues, demanding “a head to roll” for election worker errors. But as Logan explained, the felon vote was not due to election worker error, as they do not currently have the ability or the authority to perform background checks on registered voters. To back up this claim, Logan cited RCW 29A.08.520:

RCW 29A.08.520 Felony conviction. (Effective until January 1, 2006.)

Upon receiving official notice of a person’s conviction of a felony in either state or federal court, if the convicted person is a registered voter in the county, the county auditor shall cancel the defendant’s voter registration.

That’s it. When the county receives notice from the court of a felony conviction, the felon is removed from the rolls. But there is no statutory authority to do so at any other time, and indeed no way to do so without a centralized database.

Hammond suggested that background checks would fit with the spirit of the law. And newly minted Councilmember Reagan Dunn (who eerily resembles Liev Shreiber’s character in “The Manchurian Candidate”, in both appearance, manner and um… circumstance) took the opportunity to tout his experience as a federal prosecutor in pointing out that, well… I’m not really sure what he was pointing out, except that he put a lot of bad people behind bars and there’s gotta be an awful lot more felons on the rolls than King County realizes.

Which may be true. But what both Hammond and Dunn fail to acknowledge is that it’s all really a moot point. If they were paying attention to Logan’s explanation, and had bothered to read the RCW, they would have noticed that the current statute expires on Jan. 1, 2006, and is replaced with the following:

RCW 29A.08.520 Felony conviction. (Effective January 1, 2006.)

Upon receiving official notice of a person’s conviction of a felony in either state or federal court, if the convicted person is a registered voter in the county, the county auditor shall cancel the defendant’s voter registration. Additionally, the secretary of state in conjunction with the department of corrections shall arrange for a periodic comparison of a list of known felons with the statewide voter registration list. If a person is found on the department of corrections felon list and the statewide voter registration list, the secretary of state or county auditor shall confirm the match through a date of birth comparison and cancel the voter registration from the official state voter registration list. The canceling authority shall send notice of the proposed cancellation to the person at his or her last known voter registration address.

Now maybe I’m naive, but my take is that if the statute actually granted county officials the authority and ability to routinely purge the rolls of felons, the Legislature wouldn’t be adding a provision that grants county officials the authority and ability to routinely purge the rolls of felons. This change is required by the federal HAVA act, and becomes effective by the federal deadline, coinciding with completion by the Secretary of State of the statewide database that makes its provisions possible.

Did felons vote? Sure. Was it King County’s fault? No. Shouldn’t we do something about this? We already are.

So, if Dino Rossi can prove that the felon vote changed the outcome of this election, then I guess he’ll be named governor. But if you’re looking for proof of corruption or incompetence in King County Elections… you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Whew!

I hadn’t meant to write in such detail, so I’m going to post Part I now, and then post Part II upon it’s completion. Coming up… Provisional Ballots and the so-called “Discrepancy.”

Then when each one of these remarked votes is examined in court, that will greatly help determine if bias or no bias was used in the KC elections department. End of issue. So waiting to hear about the provisional ballots!

Sidelight opinion on the military ballots. In the past, I probably didn’t feel so compelled that extra efforts needed to be made to count their votes, but since we go to war in Kosovo, etc., then by all means, we must make greater efforts to get their votes counted. That is one thing from Florida that I took out of that fiasco.

Goldy– You neglect to discuss the failure of KingCo to reconcile votes & voters. You fail to discuss the Precindt poll book reconciliations….or lack thereof. And many other open issues. It’s my understanding there are now well over 100 confirmed KingCo felons that voted….along with some multiple votes by individuals and a number of other illegitimate vote issues I will leave to your imagination for now.

So, Dean Logan investigates Dean Logan. Dean Logan gives Dean Logan an A+. Dean Logan says the election results were not impacted by his department (even though he cannot account for all the ballots).

Some of you may simply take Logan’s word for it. I say tell it to the Judge!

Oh & keep in mind, NOW is not the time for the R’s to ask all kinds of probing/revealing questions….not in a public meeting where Logan can shuck & jive…better under oath so his subordinates can be questioned at the same time.

Logan’s report & testimony is nothing more than a whole bunch of JIVE TALKIN’!!!!!! (Perhaps that ought to be his anthem…the Bee Gee’s song).

Goldy – Thanks for the very interesting information. I suspect that Shark will have his piece to say soon enough, although given how immediately he tries to post about “smoking guns”, the fact he hasn’t done so yet might be revealing in itself.

Regarding ballot enhancements, from the sounds of it no ballots were enhanced in a way that obscured how it was originally marked. That really messes up a lot of arguments condemning how the counting process was executed.

Well, that may be your opinion, but as Dean Logan pointed out, Washington is a “voter intent” state. The WAC clearly spells out the procedures for ballot enhancement and duplication, and King County claims they have followed it to the letter.

FYI, I’m looking at a picture from their presentation in which the voter circled the ovals, and the election worker is filling in the ovals. The voter intent is clear.

Marks @2

15,289 military/overseas ballots were issued, and 12,694 were received back. That is identical to the county’s 83 percent turnout rate among all registered voters. In addition, 1,342 federal write-in ballots were received. Of all these ballots above, only 16 were rejected because they were received too late.

GS @3

I sincerely doubt Rossi’s lawyers will seek to produce the enhanced ballots as evidence in court. The enhancement process was conducted much like that of the hand recount.

Cynical @6

Do you even bother to read my blogs before attacking? I said I would discuss the “discrepancy” in Part II.

Logan said there were 3 confirmed cases where somebody cast the ballot of a dead person, and one case where a husband signed for his disabled wife. I don’t believe the report contains mention of confirmed cases of people voting twice.

Sorry Goldy– I guess I was so bored with your felony discussion i lost interest before the last sentence. Please…Spin Away!! I have put some heavy rocks in my pocket so I won’t be blown away by your gas-bagging.

I guess I was so bored with your felony discussion i lost interest before the last sentence. Please…Spin Away!!

Going through my “Cynical to English” dictionary I get the following translation: “Please stop using your fancy words and backing up your arguments with facts and figures. Reading is hard :( Oh, and I hate liberals.”

Speaking as a magnetician (I like samarium cobalt magnets in particular), I’d like to know if you think a ballot received by King Co. from a soldier in Iraq, which has the ovals circled rather than filled in, should be enhanced by a team of volunteers so the machines can count it? What do you think? Should we get those ballots counted, or just reject them because the soldier marked the ballot wrong?

I love folks who want to count every military ballot — even those that were not received in time — but were all for suing to keep legitimately cast ballots from being counted. Oh yeah, Rossi was ahead then…and ended up losing. Silly me for looking for consistency…

Please, by the time a soldier arrives in Iraq, he or she will have been subjected to every kind of bureaucratic nightmare you can imagine (or maybe you can’t imagine?). They would not need the divinations of King County because the ballots have instructions…

Right. And a soldier has never failed to fill out an oval properly. Or accidentally put a stray mark on the ballot, or had their ballot mangled in delivery so it needs to be duplicated or a mark enhanced so it can be fed through a machine.

Whether or not the soldiers can follow instructions, it’s still just as possible their ballots will end up needing enhancements when their intent is clear but the automated processing machines can’t discern it.

Republicans keep decrying this as some sort of nefarious plot to “add extra votes”, but it isn’t. It’s an acknowledgement that failing to fully fill out the oval (perhaps because you’re disabled, or your pen ran a little dry, or whatever) shouldn’t result in you beind disenfranchised. Nearly every state has this sort of law on the books, and Republicans will never be successful at removing this type of statute.

jcricket @ 17 I was pointing out the obvious, while you are turning to the absurd…

“And a soldier has never failed to fill out an oval properly. Or accidentally put a stray mark on the ballot, or had their ballot mangled in delivery so it needs to be duplicated or a mark enhanced so it can be fed through a machine.”

I would submit from experience that my wife never received any mail from me which was mangled (despite the bad press military mail receives) other than my own inept sentences…

Soldiers, Sailors and Air Force members are regularly tested with “fill in the oval” answer sheets. Failing to fill in the oval properly leads to remediation; an effort I would hope gets undertaken in voting…

More to the point, the last time I voted out of ConUS I received a punchcard. Most of us know about ‘hanging chads’ after 2000…

oh,and why it took 4000 people to count 900,000 ballots, approximately 225 per counter. wow that was tough. good job managing that office dean, do you need a raise? i’ll wait to hear what the court says with mr c. this dog and pony show mattered zip. maybe it made king ronny feel good tho, good home training lessons for all.

chardonnay @ 19 “Chardonnay comes from the finest white grape variety in the world, the green-skinned European vinifera grape. This is the grape that French winemakers transform into the great White Burgundy wines”, in your case it looks like the li’l ole wine maker ended up with vinegar

scottd, good advice, thanks, but calm down, didn’t you attend the healing tour? it will be interesting to see which king county employees will be promoted and/or given healthy raises. does anyone know when the payroll reports are posted for king county? Oh, probably after Judge Bridges makes a decision. wouldn’t wanna be toooo obvious.

Ballot Enhancement….. Just to be sure, I confirmed this with Logan after the meeting. So again… this is a non-issue.

Now this is what I would really call a WHITEWASH, Goldy.

No one should mark any ballot after the voter makes his/her mark. This is a recipe for disaster. I mean this WAS a recipe for the disastrous 2004 gubernatorial election. Disastrous, because we have no way of knowing who won this election. Gregoire won? I, and the majority of Washingtonians, think NOT. The Democrats followed this recipe to the letter. King County probably got this recipe from the Clintons. A family recipe. Hey, did I use recipe enough? A recipe for fraud.

Jim….Military votes count. Dead, illegal alien, and felon votes do not. Get it?? This may cost Democrats 10% of their votes, but it’s time for you to grow up and deal with it! [And no “double” voting, either. [You know, like the 40,00 NY “Upper East Siders” [ALL DEMOCRATS] that voted for Gore in both NY AND FL in 2000.]

The prize for the most idiotic line of the night goes to the gentleman who, with the certitude that only the self-righteous are capable of, claimed that “thousands, if not tens of thousands” of illegal aliens voted in the gubernatorial election.

Well, if they did, they must have voted for Rossi, because most of the aliens (legal and illegal) live and work in eastern Washington where Gregoire struggled to scrape up 30 percent in most of the counties.

The prize for the most idiotic comment at the Elections Task Force public hearing is hereby awarded to the gentleman who claimed that “thousands, if not tens of thousands” of illegal aliens voted in the gubernatorial election.

Well if they did, they must have voted for Rossi, because most of the aliens (legal and otherwise) live and work in eastern Washington, where Gregoire struggled to scrape up 30 percent in most of the counties.

“The voter list is compiled out of an entirely different process than the count of ballots cast, and for entirely different purposes.”

Why don’t you explain in detail what data is used to compile the count of ballots cast, and what data is used to compile the “voter list” by which I think you mean the list of voters credited with voting? Then you can explain why they don’t match.

You know if the democrats can’t come up with a coherent explanaton of this, and I don’t think they have up to now, they will continue to lose the propaganda war. I listened to some of Logan’s testimony, and I guess I missed where he explained this if he did at all. But as someone who has attempted to follow this, and is not a complete dummy, I need more coherent information and I haven’t got it yet from the dems, the GOP, you, or King county.

Don @ 38– ….heavy SIGHHH… If only the teachers were actually required to simply teach the 3 R’s!! It’s certainly not fair to lump al teachers into the Leftist pot. However, you are just funnin’ us if you want us to believe that NO TEACHERS force or weave their Leftist agenda on our kids. We had 4 in the public school system. I can give you many examples including one were 1st & 2nd Graders were encouraged to sign a petition by Leftists who were allowed into 3 classrooms to give a one-sided presentation about the evils of chain stores. The kids signed a petition (Without any parental permission or notification) and the petition was submitted to the City and became a public record. Parents were outraged (R’s & D’s)

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